If you skateboard, you need health insurance.

Skateboarding, like everything else worth doing, comes with certain risks. The danger of injury is part of what makes skating so rewarding.

The downhill skateboarding community is generally very conscientious about the use safety gear: everyone wears helmets and slide gloves; many of us wear full-faces, knee pads, and back protectors; and the dudes who skate at very high speed usually do so in armored leather suits. This, combined with not skating like total idiots, does a pretty good job of preventing most injuries.

That said, if you skate long enough you will eventually fall hard and need to go to the hospital to get patched up. Fortunately, modern medicine is pretty good at fixing the bone and joint injuries many of us wind up with and road rash isn’t a serious issue because the antibiotic apocalypse hasn’t arrived quite yet, so you’re probably gonna be fine.

The main thing most American skaters have to worry about is financial ruin: while pretty much every other country has figured out how to provide people with medical treatment at a low cost, America still has an antiquated system of private insurance that can turn a minor tumble off the skateboard into tens of thousands of dollars in debt.

Because of this, it is very important that skaters get health insurance. The good news is that Obamacare is still the law of the land; so if you’re under 26, you can stay on your parents’ insurance and if you’re over 26 and kinda broke, the government will help you pay for coverage. The most important thing to do is sign up within the next two weeks, while the open enrollment period is going. You can sign up or find help with the process at healthcare.gov.

Going to the hospital is the worst way to end a skate session. Don’t let an injury ruin your whole year. Sign up for health insurance.